Participation of Braille Language Embossing In Pharmaceutical Printing

Pharmaceutical printing has moved a long way since the time printing for medicinal products came in existence. A lot of improvements and amendments in pharmaceutical law have been witnessed by the printing industry making huge profit in this domain.

Braille language embossing is one such improvement in the pharmaceutical printing that has compelled many printing firms to boost their services. European countries have shown concern to the visibly challenged people and in effect to that the government has decided to enforce the Braille language embossing on the pharmaceutical packages.

The European government has literally raised a Directive 2004/27/EC by amending Directive 2001/83/EC that says about the practices for the medicinal products for human use. The new directive has made changes to the package leaflet and label requirements for pharmaceutical products. According to this directive, pharmaceutical cartons have to display the medicinal product name, both in printed text and Braille format. Folding cartons have to have text printed and embossed to meet the needs of both well sighted and visually impaired people.

Although, Braille language embossing is a favorable step for sightless people, but simultaneously it has raised trouble or better say a challenge for printing firms. Embossing Braille on carton needs especial equipments which cost too high. Moreover, people need to have the expertise to operate these especial machines.

Braille being very different with usual printing, it raises a challenge for printer. Cause, Braille text dots must be clearly and easily perceptible with finger touch. If Braille dots have to be embossed strongly to make it legible for visually-impaired people, the process of embossing may lead to breakage of the carton surface. This will in turn hamper the text visibility of well sighted people. The aim must be to attain the requirements of both blind and sighted people so that they can easily identify their medicinal product, without impairing the visibility of either people.

The major challenge of printing companies lies exactly here. They have to be targeted to the make printed pharmaceutical cartons easy to identify, which is possible only if the companies are rich in appropriate equipments. The necessity for Braille on pharmaceutical packaging is currently noticed in European countries only. The demand of Braille language embossing from European pharmaceutical companies is so high that they have started to divert their requirements to India. Many European pharmaceutical companies now prefer India for their printing needs. Perhaps, this is the reason that despite of less demand of Braille printing in this large country, there are a pretty good number of companies providing this service.